Village Country Diary Acorns


continued from previous page


skin. I think the tree is one called Warwickshire Drooper. Many of ours are sucker-grown from very old trees. This is the kind of plum that used to grow along the canal near the Sta- tion Road bridge in Alvechurch until Network Rail destroyed them for a temporary car park. Damsons of course are also a


Midland speciality, though one which is gradually disappearing as the old trees go and new ones are not planted. They have gone feral in lots of places and grow in hedges and along the canal. They are sweet enough to eat raw when ripe, but


like the local plums they don’t keep long once ripe. Our native wild plums, though,


are not ripe yet. The wild plum or bullace is set and turned purple, but will not be sweet until October. The small sloe or blackthorn fruit weren’t considered ripe till after the first frost, when you could make your sloe gin. But you can make your damson gin without any sugar if you like, any time now! Meantime the early apples are ready. The wild crab apples are


Hop


small and golden, and sour! The early eating apples tend to be red-skinned types, but there are some old yel- low varieties too, often growing as wildings – seeded by birds. None of these early apples keep well, so you need to eat them quickly. You probably won’t be able to give them away this year, as everybody has so many! There are still some flowers in September, and many of these are golden. One of the hawkbits, which I mentioned in


July, is the autumn hawkbit.


This is a tall, handsome late-flower- ing plant with single dandelion-type flowers. The ubiquitous ragwort is still about in September too. Another of the daisy family plants, the pretty tansy, should still be flowering now. This is the one with the large heads of little button like yellow flowers, an old herb with a strong smell. There is still some hanging on to life on Alvechurch station. But there are also some new flow-


Autumn hawkbit 46 The Village September 2017


ers. Along the canal is orange bal- sam, a very late summer flower. It’s


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68